News Analysis

data centers, external provisioning, said

Gartner analyst Jon Hardcastle.
Insurer OneAmerica is transferring its
data center operations to a service provider because its concerned that one day
it wont be able to replace the experts who
run its vital systems, said CIO Gene Berry.
By June, the company expects to complete the transfer of all of its IT services
to T Systems North America, while
cutting the size of its internal data center
to 2,000 square feet from 25,000 square
feet. The in-house facility will mostly
support networking and will be managed
by T Systems.
OneAmerica once employed about 65
people in its data center and used about
18 technologies. In some cases, only one
or two people had the expertise to maintain specialized systems. That gave us a
lot of concern long-term, said Berry. We
didnt have the ability to hire backups.
Hagen Wenzek, CTO at IPG Media
brands, which manages Interpublic
Groups media assets, also cited concerns
about potential brain drain as a reason for
shifting management of the companys
SQL Server and SharePoint systems to
managed services provider Avanade.
I cant hire enough experts willing to
work for a media company, said Wenzek,
noting that most people with the skills
he needs would rather work for tech
vendors.
Avanade boosted the performance
of the Microsoft technology that IPG
Mediabrands uses and improved delivery
of reports, said Wenzek. IPG Mediabrands
has since shifted the focus of its IT hiring
efforts to recruiting business analysts who
irtualization and cloud services are making it
can work with data and visualization tools, he added.
easier for companies to shift IT infrastructure operaHank Seader, managing principal of the Uptime Institute, said
tions to service providers, and that is exactly what
that it takes a certain set of legacy skills, a certain commitment to
many organizations are doing.
the less-than-glorious career fields to make data centers work, and
The trend is most prevalent among small and
its hard to find people to do it.
midsize companies, many of which are shutting down internal
Do in-house data centers have a future? I think only [at] the
systems and shifting IT workloads to external providers because
really large companies, said Berry, [at] smaller companies, no.
they want to save money and because theyre concerned that it
Meanwhile, the closing of data centers has become a significant
will become difficult to find people with the
concern for IT professionals. Jobs with the
skills necessary to run data centers.
best career paths are moving from data
Large public- and private-sector orgacenters to fast-growing service providers.
nizations have been consolidating data
For instance, IT hosting company RackI cant hire
centers for years by better optimizing inspace plans to hire 1,000 new employees
enough experts
house operations; the federal government,
over the next two years. In the 2012
for example, is shutting down hundreds of
Rackspace annual report, executives told
willing to work for a media
data centers. But most of those enterprises
investors that demand is growing in part
company.
only use cloud services at the margins.
because smaller companies lack the IT staff
hageN weNzek, CTO,
We are definitely seeing a trend away
to manage infrastructure operations and
IPG MedIabrands
from in-house data centers toward external
dont want to buy new equipment. u

Pulling the Plug on Small

In-house Data Centers
As IT workers with key skills grow scarce and the costs of
upgrading data centers rise, many CIOs are replacing in-house
ops with cloud-based services. By Patrick Thibodeau

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4/5/13 9:48 AM